Sleigh Ride 2 for Crafty Individuals

Welcome to a new week and my post today is to point you in the direction of the Crafty Individuals blog where a new challenge is up for December and we would like to challenge you to make anything festive for December.

This was not such a quick card as I was expecting it to be, but that’s because I kept changing my mind on things.

The background was made with distress inks and CI 241 snowflakes stamp.

Tim’s Townscape on the edge die with  Core’dinations paper sanded down and added distress crackle paint. When dry I painted on some white acrylic paint and glitter to make it look snowy.

I stamped the image from CI  398, one of the newest CI stamps, onto tissue paper …

… and with a paintbrush I painted a line of water around the image and gently teased it out (I use a blunt knife to help me pull the fibres apart).

I reversed it when I glued it to the background, the rough edge blends in really well and you can hardly tell it is there.

I also used the pennants on the edge die to create the top border and finished off with a computer generated sentiment.

Materials

CI 398 Santa’s Sleigh Ride – Crafty Individuals

Townscape On The Edge die – Tim Holtz for Sizzix

Distress Crackle paint – Ranger

Coredinations Black Magic paper pad

Distress inks – Iced Spruce, dried marigold, chipped sapphire

Well I managed to almost get the house decorated over the weekend, three trees and three rooms nearly finished, just a few cards to write and get out and then the presents to finish and wrap, but I feel I am nearly there now.

Those of you who were so very kind to send my Granddaughter, Becca, cards this time last year when she was in hospital will know she had a really tough time when she was diagnosed with Crohns disease. But she has flourished over the year, all her weight went back on and she has coped magnificently without her bowel working. Today she has gone back into hospital to have everything re-connected and we are hoping and praying for successful surgery for her. I will let you know how things go.

Enjoy the week and your festive preparations.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Funkie Junkie 12 tags of Christmas #9

A totally different design from Linda’s #9 tag but here are the things I took inspiration from – a large glittered snowflake, the beautiful colours, the flowers made from the tattered pinecone die and the silver embossed sentiment.

I love the cool, frosty look to this card and started with a distress stain background using faded jeans and brushed pewter creating a wonderful marbleised and metallic effect.

I used a fabulous large snowflake stamp from Penny Black and randomly stamped over with embossing ink and covered with silver embossing powder,

I stamped the sentiment onto white card using the silver embossing powder, die-cut and inked with walnut stain and vintage photo.

The large snowflake is from a woodware die-cut set that I have had for years.

I covered it with brushed pewter distress stain and when dry with glossy accents and the fabulous pumice stone distress glitter, it really comes out like a wonderful vintage glitter effect. I love it. I think I am going to go back and add a pearl to the middle though to finish it off.

I used white card again covered with the brushed pewter stain to die-cut the tattered pinecone and make the flowers edging them with walnut stain DI. I also added some sakura pen sparkle to the petals and some frosted lace stickles.

The leaves were covered with the pumice stone glitter and I mounted it onto a kraft card again edging the background with frosted lace. I don’t think the photos do justice to all the lovely subtle sparkle on this card, but it’s really pretty irl.

Linda has the full details of this challenge on her tag 1 post but in essence make a tag or card etc. and take something as inspiration from Linda’s tag for your own make, link this up to her post and enter all 12 challenges by December 22nd to be eligible for the draw. Linda is very generous with her prizes so you could win a $50 or $25 voucher to her on-line store ‘The Funkie Junkie Boutique’ and even get 10% discount over January 2014.

After I took the photos I adhered a large gem to the snowflake which added to the wintry feel of the card and then gave it to my sister who came to visit and swap Christmas presents on Sunday.

I got more cards written last night and want to get the trees in today while there is no rain or wind. Everything is winding up and getting so exciting. I just love this time of year.



Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.

~Laura Ingalls Wilder

hugs {brenda} x0x

Holiday Joy for Country View Crafts

My tag is made with the Tim Holtz Holiday Joy Framelits set which are stamps and dies that fit together. (Hence my title).

This is just one of the photos I am using as a sneak peek for my project which can be found over on the Country View Crafts Updates blog. If you are not toooooo busy with your own Christmas preparations I would love it if you could pop over and see me there.

Thank you for visiting and for all your recent comments which I really appreciate.

Welcome to new followers and thanks for being part of my creative journey, I hope you find something that inspires you to create your own art and come back when you can. Please leave a link so that I can come and see you too.

Have a great week, mine seems to really be winding up with all the Christmas cards to get in the post and presents to finish off. And today I am teaching the Vintage Tag Journal to five lovely ladies who are regulars at my workshops.

See you soon.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Updated to show all the steps -

This tag is made with the Tim Holtz Holiday Joy Framelits set which are stamps and dies that fit together. (Hence my title).

The background was a mop up from another project using faded Jeans and Brushed Pewter Distress Stains – smooshed on the craft mat and the tag dipped, spritzed and dried until I was happy with it. Over that I stamped a text stamp (I used one that had been sitting on my desk and I’m not sure where it is from) with Wendy Vecchi’s Watering Can Archival Ink and when that was dry I sprayed Dylusions White Linen ink spray several times drying inbetween bursts.

The trees were stamped using two sizes, one from Mini Holidays 2 and the other from the Framelits set and again I used the Watering Can archival but mixed it with Olive Archival giving me the two tone look and creating a forest.

I stamped the deer onto a piece of blue distressed patterned scrap of designer paper which can’t be seen now I have die-cut it and edged it with Walnut Stain Distress Ink. The stars were stamped with Embossing Ink, covered with sticky embossing powder and then quickly sprinkled with Glamour Dust when it was hot and sticky. I then die-cut them and blended Walnut Stain over the top and gently wiped the sparkly snowflake with a damp baby wipe to reveal the glitter again.

I extended the tag using  a piece of card with a very similar snowflake on it, I think it was from MME. The sentiment was stamped using little stick alphabet stamps, cut into a pennant and edged with gold stickles.

Gecko Galz Christmas Tag

Gosh where did November go???? Here we are at the beginning of December and I didn’t post all my Gecko Galz samples for being one of their guest designers for November. Here is a tag I made.

A tag die-cut from corrugated card and painted with some tissued tape over the top..

On the edge snow flurries die, inked and distress glitter added.

Tim Holtz banner die to add the sentiment.

A metal charm painted with distress paints and glitter. A crinkled,inked ribbon.

And this gorgeous GG imaged, aged with distress inks and a few more snowflakes added.

Right, lets see if I can get to grips with December projects and get all the Christmassy ones in before the big day.

Have a great advent and preparations for the festive season.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Exciting News

I am just so excited …………

………… after a lot of hard work with Susan (Country View Crafts) and Chrissie (my fabulous techie sister) we are now able to announce a new venture -----

Country View Crafts Workshops

The first one is January 23rd 2014 with Yours Truly running a Tim Holtz style Tag Journal workshop. This is very similar to the tag book Tim taught this year when he came to Coventry, I was so inspired by his workshop and what I made I knew I wanted to use it as the inspiration to teach something similar. So those of you who didn’t go to Tim’s session might like to get inky and have fun creating something along the same lines.

This will be a no-stress workshop using distress inks and lots of idea-ology products, dies and Tim’s stamps. I will provide a set of vintage photos (mostly cabinet card portraits) or you can bring your own.

Full details are available from the workshop product page on the Country View Crafts web site where you can download a pdf that gives all the information you will need.

Now all I need are some participants lol.

Happy Friday and have a fabulous weekend.

hugs {brenda} x0x

The Funkie Junkie 12 Tags of Christmas #8

Still catching up but staying in sight so to speak, thank goodness. Tag #8 of Linda’s gorgeous set can be found on her blog The Funkie Junkie.

The inspiration for my card comes from several ideas of Linda’s. Firstly using the Damask Background technique shown by Tammy Tutterow on one of her Tuesday Tutorial posts (Tammy has lots of wonderful inspiration to share every week – so worth a look if you haven’t seen her work). The other inspiration came from using a Santa image for the card, snowflakes and rusty bells, I rusted these weeks ago and this is the first time I’ve used some of them.

The top border is a Marianne icicles die and I have edged them with walnut stain and covered them (and nearly everything else lol) with Antiquities Frosted Crystal, it is an almost clear embossing powder but has that faint vintage sparkle to it …..

… which hopefully you can see better in this next photograph.

Santa was inked up with Vermillion and Black Archival inks, starting with the red so that there is no contamination of colours on the pads.

A few snowflakes and some washi tape to finish it off.

Linda has the full details of this challenge on her tag 1 post but in essence make a tag or card etc. and take something as inspiration from Linda’s tag for your own make, link this up to her post and enter all 12 challenges by December 22nd to be eligible for the draw. Linda is very generous with her prizes so you could win a $50 or $25 voucher to her on-line store ‘The Funkie Junkie Boutique’ and even get 10% discount over January 2014.

I have just found some of the cards I made last year that didn’t get sent out so I now have a box full this year to use. The most ahead I have ever been.

Hope you are able to crack on with preparations, I am going to get some presents wrapped soon so that when the tree and decorations go up I will be almost ready.

Have fun.

hugs {brenda} x0x

The Funkie Junkie 12 Tags of Christmas #7

Well I haven’t seen anything this year of Tim’s gorgeous toy soldier so I decided to use it on card 7 following Linda’s fabulous make which can be found HERE. (Still playing catch up but got a couple more ready to go)

My inspiration this week was using some embossed texture on the background which you can see in the top right hand corner, using the word Joy and the beautiful inked and stamped poinsettia.

I loved making the toy soldier and colouring him in iced spruce making a change to the reds he is normally seen in.

The poinsettia is made from cream card with iced spruce, vintage photo and walnut stain distress inks, stamped over using the text stamp from Letter to Santa set.

The background was embossed with a sparkly embossing powder and gives a lovely subtle effect.

The word JOY was cut in kraft resist using the TH Word Play die. The snowflakes are a mix of Maya Road and TH inked in iced spruce and covered with rock candy distress glitter. Some little pieces of washi tape finish it off.

Linda has the full details of this challenge on her tag 1 post but in essence make a tag or card etc. and take something as inspiration from Linda’s tag for your own make, link this up to her post and enter all 12 challenges by December 22nd to be eligible for the draw. Linda is very generous with her prizes so you could win a $50 or $25 voucher to her on-line store ‘The Funkie Junkie Boutique’ and even get 10% discount over January 2014.

Look out for some special news over the coming week, something I am very excited about.


"Creativity is contagious, pass it on" - Albert Einstein

Hugs {brenda} x0x

Tim’s November Tag of 2013 and reverse chalkboard effect

Having learnt this chalkboard technique on the Creative Chemistry 102 course I was pleased to see Tim use it this month for his tag. He gets great effects, but this time I wanted to play a little more.

This is my tag using the Sizzix Framelets Snowman Blueprint set. I followed Tim’s steps except I used pastels including coloured ones and black.

The die-cut layers give fabulous dimension and there are so many pieces that can be cut easily.

The hat, holly, nose and scarf were cut and layered and you can see where I used red, orange and green pastels. The berries are coloured with red stickles.

The ice skate charm was painted with a dab of picket fence distress paint to make it look snowy and the snowflakes were inked with pumice stone DI and covered with frosted lace stickles. You can clearly see here how I added more contrast by using the black pastel.

On this next snowman I used good old children’s chalk.

He came out quite well on the frosted crystal although some of the first ones I made I didn’t heat the EP enough and was too cautious with Tim’s warning.

I used some of the bought embellishments I have in my Christmas box and Tim’s Merriment papers.

This last piece shows a snowman in reverse, he is black and was as a result of playing with PanPastels rather than chalks. The pans are so fine they wouldn’t ‘stick’ to the tooth of the EP.

You can see that they left a white residue on the black card and to get more of a chalkboard effect I added some lines using the white pastel again.

Using more bought embellishments and Merriment paper I made another quick card with him.

Tim showed the sizzix magnetic platform for cutting thin dies on his post, I thoroughly recommend it if you use a Big Shot or Vagabond, cutting all and especially small thin dies are so easy now, no taping them down. Susan has them in stock at Country View Crafts. 

Off to link this to Tim’s November tag, I can’t believe there is only one more for the year.

“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”

Franklin D Roosevelt

 

Hope you are having a great weekend.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Victorian Carolers for CVC

Good morning everyone

My post is a little late this morning because I forgot to schedule this with the shop post duh!!!!!

Anyhow just a sneak peek for my card which is on full view with instructions at the Country View Crafts Updates blog.

Hope you have time to take a look.

Have a great Friday and a happy weekend with hopefully some crafty time for you.

hugs {brenda} x0x

Updated with full instructions -

I just love the silhouette shapes of the Victorian Carolers and have used the Tim Holtz die with distress stains and remnant rubs for my card today

Starting with the rub-ons I rubbed some over my background card leaving a space where the silhouettes were going to be placed.

I dispensed the colours of stains I wanted to use onto my craft mat and followed the wrinkle free distress technique by Tim Holtz.

When dry I added the silhouettes and used a white drawing pencil to go round the edges and make the silhouettes 'pop' more from the background.

However the silhouettes looked rather stark so I cut another set and stamped them with a Tim Holtz Christmas script (use could use any text or music score if you haven't got this one)  .....

..... and adhered them using foam pads to create some depth and dimension.

Three stars cut in chipboard from the Crescent Moon and Stars die were covered with Stickles glitter and I made the poinsettia using crinoline fabric. I was rather please with the quite colourful outcome.